Saturday, December 14, 2013

Window on Eurasia: Moscow Arrests Anti-Sochi Circassian Activists, Then Backs Down UPDATED VERSION

Paul Goble

Staunton,
December 14 – In the latest indication that Circassian opposition to the Sochi
Olympics is far more widespread that Moscow claims and that Russian President
Vladimir Putin is afraid of it, Russian officials yesterday arrested 15
Circassian activists in the North Caucasus who oppose holding the Olympics on
the site of the genocide of their people in 1864.

This represents a defeat for
Vladimir Putin who had to oust the KBR governor to get his way: Arsen Kanonkov apparently refused to carry out the arrests
on trumped up charges, while the new man, Yuri Kokov, who earlier helped create
an FSB unit to fight “extremism,” was entirely prepared to follow Putin’s line
and deployed massive numbers of security officers.

On
Friday, pro-Moscow officials in KBR are known to have arrested Ibragim Yaganov,
Ruslan Kabiyev, Ruslan Kesh, Yevgeny Tashu, Acumij Hilmi, Amin Zeh, Adnan
Khuade, and eight others.Kesh and Tashu were released after a few
hours; all the others have since been set free.

As it has done
so often in the past, Moscow is behaving far more brutally in regions where
there are few outside journalists, confident that it can suppress much of the
story or at least put its own spin on it with commentaries that few outsiders
will be able to check and then challenge.